The Heartless One
Once upon a time, there was a boy who was born without a heart.
Just as the blind cannot see the world's colors and the deaf cannot hear its sounds, a person without a heart cannot feel any emotion at all.
The townspeople despised this strange child. Some of the other children would throw stones at him while singing a mocking rhyme: "An empty chest grows no heart, just as a barren graveyard grows no flowers."
At least his family loved him and cared for him with all their might.
But whether he was bullied or cherished made no difference to the boy. He grew up feeling nothing, and even as he stood before his last living relative's gravestone, not a single tear fell.
Such numbness frightened the people around him, who banded together to drive the heartless boy away. They destroyed his home, stole his possessions, and made it impossible for him to stay.
So the heartless one set out on the road, a simple pack on his back, carrying no fond memories of home, no hope for the future.
Because he had no heart.
---
Years passed. The heartless one traveled many places, endured many hardships, and witnessed many strange sights. Among the people he met were some who reminded him of himself—people whose hearts were cracked and broken, unable to hold their feelings, which leaked out through the holes like water from a shattered jar.
Yet these cold-natured people could pass among ordinary folk without being rejected or discovered.
The heartless one sought their advice, and they told him the secret was to use the fragments of heart they still possessed—saving just a sliver of feeling for the most important people in their lives, pretending to have a full range of emotions when needed, even though those feelings were never genuine.
But this method would not work for the heartless one. He had no heart at all, not even a fragment. He couldn't fake something he'd never possessed.
The others gave him sympathetic looks. He couldn't tell whether they truly felt sorry for him or were only pretending. But it didn't matter—he wouldn't have cared either way. He rested, then turned back to the road.
An old man called out to him and said there was another way.
"Go find a heart," the old man told him. "A perfect heart. And ask its owner to share it with you."
This was the first time the heartless one's wandering had a goal.
He would find a perfect heart.
---
But a perfect heart was not so easily found. The heartless one wandered for more years, meeting countless people and seeing their hearts, only to discover that many of the so-called ordinary folk were not so different from the broken-hearted ones he'd met before.
The only difference was that their holes were smaller, and whatever feelings they held leaked out in more useful ways.
The heartless one didn't know whether to keep searching. He decided to pause his journey and rest in a small village along the road.
At the village entrance stood a large, ancient tree. A kitten was stranded at the top of the tree, mewing helplessly.
The heartless one climbed up and brought the kitten down.
Not because he felt any compassion for the small creature—simply because he lacked the fear of heights that kept the villagers below from doing the same.
A young woman waiting below received the kitten from his arms and expressed her gratitude.
The heartless one wasn't listening to her words. He was staring at her—staring at the heart beating in her chest, tender, red, its smooth surface unmarred by a single flaw.
It was a perfect heart.
That was why the heartless one chose to stay in this village.
---
The heartless one had learned many things in his years of wandering, but he had never learned how to ask someone to share their heart with him.
He couldn't even muster the expression of a plea. All he could do was clumsily display what few talents he'd acquired.
He used the carpentry skills he'd learned from a woodworker to fix her leaking roof before the rainy season. He used the painting skills he'd learned from an artist to capture the light in her eyes beneath the stars. He used the baking skills he'd learned from a bread maker to present her with a small cake topped with strawberries on her birthday.
These efforts seemed to work. Every time, the girl smiled at him—this strange, expressionless boy whom the other villagers called a freak.
She smiled genuinely, happily.
Yes, the heartless one could recognize the happiness in that smile. Even though he had never tasted it himself, he somehow felt the emotion, faintly, as if by proximity.
That must have been the magic of drawing close to a perfect heart.
At the spring festival, the heartless one used the conjuring skills he'd learned from a magician, releasing a flock of white doves that circled around the girl, around her perfect heart.
The girl, holding the kitten, walked through the ring of doves and came to stand beside him.
The cat leapt from her arms and rubbed against his leg, mewing. The girl rose onto her toes and kissed his cheek.
"Thank you for everything you've done for me," she said, blushing. "I have a gift for you, too."
She didn't need to explain further. The heartless one already knew what gift she was giving.
In truth, he could no longer be called heartless.
Half a heart, split from that perfect heart, was beating inside his chest.
In that instant, he felt love and warmth he'd never known—emotions surging toward him like a tide, overwhelming, filling him with a joy so fierce it left him reeling. He smiled for the first time in his life, swept the girl into his arms, and spun her around and around the festival square.
In the beginning of spring, they lived happily together.
Sharing one perfect heart.
---
But this was not the end of the story.
A perfect heart is perfect because it is whole and complete. Once split in two and placed in separate bodies, it is no longer whole, no longer complete.
When he and she held each other close, the two halves resonated, creating sweetness. But the moment they were apart, both halves were wracked by a tearing pain, teaching the heartless one—who had never known hurt before—that a heart that can hold trust and joy can also contain jealousy and sorrow.
And no matter how tightly two souls entwine, they remain two different people with their own wills, unable to fuse as seamlessly as the two halves of a split heart once did.
The pain worsened, eventually eclipsing the happiness that had come before. Sometimes, even a short separation—him going to market alone, or her gathering plums by herself—would send them both to the ground, clutching their chests.
Their first fight was born of this.
Then a second, a third, and countless more after that.
Watching the girl grow increasingly wan, seeing blood seep from the divided edges of their shared heart, a complicated emotion arose in his chest—part the ache of sacrifice, part the relief of protecting his beloved, half sweet, half bitter, beyond words.
He made his decision and returned his half of the heart to her.
The two halves fused back together, restored to one heart inside her chest. But a deep scar remained where they'd been joined, and this heart was no longer perfect.
As for him—once again, he was a heartless one who knew nothing of love or hate.
---
When the heartless one left the village, the girl didn't come to see him off.
Only the willful kitten followed, mewing, refusing to be driven away.
In the past, he might have simply left the cat behind and continued on his way. But though he was once again a heartless one, something felt different from the beginning.
He crouched down and picked up the kitten, remembering the smile on the girl's face when she'd once walked toward him holding this cat. He realized that although the half-heart was gone, every emotion it had awakened had left a faint trace.
These traces became echoes, reverberating through his empty chest, again and again.
Resounding, it seemed, for the rest of his days.
---
The heartless one, wandering with his kitten, had lost his purpose.
He no longer sought a perfect heart—there was no need. Having once possessed a heart, he'd learned what reactions were appropriate for each situation.
Even though those responses were never truly felt.
Such a heartless one would no longer be scorned or driven out. On the road, he could earn the goodwill of strangers, finding warm rooms and hot meals in cold winter nights.
But none of it could fill the void in his chest.
The aftermath of having had a heart and lost it never healed. Instead, on lonely nights, it sprouted something he'd never experienced before.
Longing.
At the center of his longing stood the girl, far, far away.
The heartless one held the kitten tight against his chest, listening to the howling wind and snow outside, and shed the first tear of his life.
Even though he didn't understand why.
---
In the years that followed, the heartless one continued to wander.
He had many skills and could support himself and the cat, but he never stayed in one place long, because he wanted to meet many strangers with many different stories.
The heartless one would help these strangers with urgent tasks, but he never asked for money or goods in return.
The only payment he requested was this: when midnight came and everyone was asleep, he asked to borrow their heart for one night.
In this way, he could place the borrowed heart inside his chest and dream the dreams of someone with a heart.
In those dreams, he saw a whole heart torn and shattered, and broken hearts slowly mending. Though every stranger's heart was riddled with holes and scars from their own messy lives, as long as the feelings left inside were genuine, that was enough—enough to recall the taste of being alive.
Even if, when morning came and the dream faded, he remembered nothing at all.
But the fullness was an illusion, brief and borrowed. Every time he returned a heart to its owner, the void in his own chest seemed to grow wider, harder to ignore.
There was no help for it. Those ordinary people with full chests, those who had the right to love and hate—at least they were born with a heart.
Perfect or not.
Unlike the heartless one, who had nothing from the start.
---
And so more years passed. The heartless one was no longer young.
The kitten that had accompanied him grew into an old cat, and on a warm spring afternoon, it fell asleep in his arms and never woke again.
The heartless one found a patch of barren ground by the roadside, buried the cat, built a small mound, and sat beside it for a long, long time.
He didn't know where to go next.
Then, on the cat's grave, a tender sprout pushed through the earth. It grew quickly, sending out branches and leaves, becoming a cluster of vivid green.
At the top of the plant bloomed a single rose, fire-red, swaying gently in the wind, brushing against the heartless one's hand like a playful kitten.
The heartless one suddenly knew what to do. He plucked the rose and began walking back the way he had come.
The journey was long, for he had traveled very far. He crossed deserts, seas, and mountains, seeing everyone he'd ever met again.
They all remembered him.
"You're that strange but kindhearted wanderer," they said. "Going home this time?"
The heartless one didn't answer. He only waved.
And kept walking back.
---
After a long journey, the heartless one finally returned to the village where the girl lived, carrying the rose that never wilted.
The old tree at the village entrance was still there. The heartless one stopped beneath it, hesitating for a long time before moving forward.
Until someone came out through the gate and saw him.
Their eyes met. They recognized each other at once, but only stood there, saying nothing.
The girl, of course, was no longer young. Her looks had faded. But what the heartless one studied was her heart.
That once-perfect heart still bore the deep scar across its center, though compared to when they'd parted, the mark had faded—no longer so severe or raw. Yet across the rest of her heart were many new scars and wounds, layered and overlapping, some calloused thick.
It was clear that over the long years, this heart had been wounded and healed time and again, bearing every hardship and absolution with stubborn, unyielding determination.
It was no longer the flawless, shining heart of her youth.
But after seeing countless hearts shatter and mend, the heartless one knew: a heart weathered by storms yet enduring—this was a truly perfect heart.
---
"My cat?" the girl, no longer young, asked. "I told him to stay by your side."
The heartless one shook his head. The girl understood, sighed, her expression tinged with sadness. But when he offered her the rose, she smiled as brightly as she had the very first time they'd met.
"Thank you," she said. "It's beautiful."
The heartless one watched her breathe in the rose's fragrance, and he smiled too.
This smile was not false.
Because he had crossed mountains and seas only to tell her one thing.
"Even though I have no heart, seeing you live with a truly perfect heart makes me glad."
He turned to leave, not wanting to disturb her peaceful life. But after a few steps, a sharp pain seized his chest.
He managed a few more paces, but the pain only worsened until he collapsed to the ground.
It reminded him of the time they'd shared a heart, but this baffled him—he wasn't sharing a heart with anyone now. Why would the pain of separation still exist?
The girl hurried to his side and helped him up. Then her eyes widened with joyful surprise.
"You have a heart!"
The heartless one looked down. Inside his chest, a tiny heart was beating.
Very small, very young—like the sprout that had grown from the cat's grave, vibrant and unblemished.
In that brief moment, he recalled the old man who'd told him to find a perfect heart, and the childhood rhyme the other children had sung while pelting him with stones.
"An empty chest grows no heart, just as a barren graveyard grows no flower."
Unless—someone selfless enough to share her perfect heart let a single drop of heartsblood fall as seed into that empty chest, nourished by the years, watered by tears of longing, until at last, from the depths of the soul, a genuine heart grew.
The heartless one—no, the man who had wandered and searched all his life—finally had a heart of his own.
It was a whole and independent heart, but also a heart tethered to love. It ached from separation and yearning, but it also held the perseverance and hope of reunion.
It was just very small and fragile still, in need of much love and protection.
"Don't worry. I've spent years saving up the courage to wander with you." The girl took his hand. "I've regretted not following you that time. This time, wherever you go, take me with you, and let me look after this little heart."
The next moment, the man pulled the girl into his arms, and beneath the tree where they'd first met, he wept like a newborn child.
I'm sorry—this is still not the end of the story.
But it doesn't matter. We only need to know that from this moment on, two perfect hearts, and the souls that housed them, were bound together, walking the long road side by side, sharing life's joys and sorrows.
For the rest of their days, never to part.
Author: Willow Page